This vile tome collects thirteen blasphemous Lovecraftian tales of a certain scribe named Nick Mamatas. Warning: May contain shoggoths, martial arts, weirdness, Nyarlathotep, fish people from Innsmouth, and copious literary references. With an introduction by Orrin Grey and a bevy of disturbing alchemical illustrations by GMB Chomichuk. Side effects may include hallucinations and a steep descent into insanity.

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Lovecraft's style is so demanding of attention that it's often difficult to know if the substance of his imaginings holds up without it. I'm sure I'm not the first one to wonder, what if Ernest Hemingway or Raymond Carver wrote The Call of Cthulhu? This collection of Lovecraftian tales by Nick Mamatas is almost an answer to that question. Mamatas' tales mix playfulness and deep horror in a way that sets them well apart from realist fiction, at the same time as adhering closely to the beats and pacing of the mid-20th-century personal-epiphany story. Each of the tales of the Nickronomicon sets out, in spare, clean prose, to explore Lovecraft's world from a new perspective -- one Lovecraft himself never even hinted at -- the perspective of the practical, calm, brave man. The resulting stories are marvelously entertaining and give me an enhanced appreciation of Lovecraft.

So many of Lovecraft's own tales boil down to: I saw a weird thing, and it totally freaked me out. Mamatas' tales, which follow closely, lovingly, but never blindly, in the steps of Lovecraft, are about what happens when you don't freak out, even if the thing you see is unbearable; even if you lose your entire mind. Madness, in the Nickronomicon, is no impediment to progress. Ancient horrors are nothing to turn away from, not when there is a thesis to be written, perhaps, or a buck to be made. Lovecraft's mastery is in gazing, horrified, into the abyss; Mamatas' is in leaping calmly into it, and spinning a cracking yarn on the way down to oblivion.

The Nickronomicon is a cheekily titled collection of stories that are overtly Lovecraftian without stepping anywhere near boring pastiche. Well written, funny, bleak, and excitingly alive stories that make you realize that stories that directly reference HPL can still be revelatory.

You won't find many authors more fully versed in Lovecraft than Mamatas. That being said, he offers up some new twists and turns in the mythos, which include time travel, out of body experiences and shifting race/gender roles. Some highlights are The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft, Real People Slash, Jitterbuggin, That of Which We Speak When We Speak of the Unspeakable (personal favorite), and On the Occasion of My Retirement, which is new to the collection and, by all rights, should be turned into an audio version with an actor narrating as if on stage. He blends the new with the old and never turns away from who and what Lovecraft was as a person but rather fully engages the author. A great collection for Lovecraft enthusiasts and those looking to the forefront of modern speculative fiction.